Unending - a Sword Art Online Fanfic (being rewritten)

Chapter 35: Blame Game

Here is another chapter, and hopefully another one will be out soon. Enjoy! Also, I just finished reading the novel Ready Player One, Oh My GOSH!!!! It was amazing! I totally recommend it. Sorry distracting, read on eager readers, read on.

Akari's POV:

Akari and Zaor were just entering the camp again after having walked back through the woods when a guard came running up to them.

"Sire, your father wishes for you to come to his tent immediately, and he said to bring your wife as well."

Zaor and Akari looked at each other, then Zaor nodded to the soldier. "Lead the way." he said.

As they followed the soldier through the camp, Akari tried to puzzle out what Zaor's father might want to see them both about.

"Do you know why your father wishes to see us?" She asked Zaor.

Zaor shook his head. "No, but we will find out in just a minute. Here we are."

The soldier entered the king's tent, followed by the couple.

"Father," Zaor called out, "you called for us?"

Zaor's father was standing facing away from them.

"You called for us, he says." Zaor's father said in a mocking tone. He turned around and faced his son and daughter in law.

Akari and Zaor gasped at his newly disfigured face.

"Father! What happened to you? Who did this?" Zaor asked.

"I just had a rebellion led by the captive workers we'd acquired while you two were conveniently away. And they decided that the best thing to do to the man they most hated was this." He pointed at his still slightly bleeding face.

"But it's not that they rebelled, or even managed to get to me that surprised me. It was what they had to say about the masterminds behind this attempt on my life."

Suddenly, soldiers seized Akari from behind and bound her hands behind her back.

"Hey! Let me go! Just what do you think you are doing?!" Akari shouted.

"Their jobs..." The king said, "...arresting you."

Akari looked at him in confusion. "What?"

The king nodded at a corner of the tent. Akari turned to look at it, only to discover that most of the captives were the students who had been captured along with her during the takeover of the first floor several weeks ago. Among them was Akari's other teammate, the one she had never bothered to learn the name of, or even talk to since they had been captured.

"That one there said that you put him and the others up to this. You had apparently given secret orders while your husband wasn't looking to silence me while you kept my son all buttered up in your deceit. Of course they didn't work, because your goons forgot their goal in the face of getting personal revenge on me, which the did." He traced his wounds. "I'll always have these scars as a reminder of their revenge, but they won't live long enough to enjoy it, because I am going to kill them all right now, and you are going to watch them all die before joining them, that is... unless you confess to being their accomplice."

Akari looked at him in horror. "But I had nothing to do with this. Your men know about every person who has been with me since the wedding. None of these people are on that list."

"Oh, but two of those people are. Your friends... Utsumi and Nagano I believe, were the only ones who talked to you outside of me and my son since the wedding, therefore they must've passed your orders to the others. I understand they escaped, meaning you didn't want your friends involved in something so risky, smart, but useless. We will find them eventually, and then we will give them very special deaths. However, until then, yours will suffice. Take her and the others to be executed."